


Flooding My Heart

by prestissimo



Series: Lost Entries from the Daily Ledger of Nicolas de Lenfent [3]
Category: Vampire Chronicles - Anne Rice
Genre: Drowning, Gen, Nightmares, Temporary Amnesia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-18
Updated: 2019-06-18
Packaged: 2020-05-14 00:52:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 492
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19262656
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prestissimo/pseuds/prestissimo
Summary: Nicolas has nightmares about Armand.





	Flooding My Heart

I dread what should happen once I commit to paper the screeching horrors of my dreams and yet I persist ~~, ever spiteful and contrarian.~~ No. Perhaps not. I have good reasons. I know as much as I can glean from a single moment. It is not enough.  _I have been losing time again._  There is no Lestat to inspire me to remain, not anymore. And so I drift.

There, I must write things down. I look over the beginning and do not recall what—oh. Yes. The drowning. The dream always begins with a rain-washed sky, but the weak sunlight does not bother me, and I am awake. But there is no one moving. Still, colorful statues, more life-like than life, stand around, frozen as they go about their business. The entire world is suspended, even the doves in the square are mid-flight, caught in an invisible slip of time. I feel like a wretched monster, moving unnaturally through these good people, and now with no one watching, I bare my fangs and roar.

As if in answer, the sea groans and the water swells and lurches upwards, pulsing towards the finely-laid stones in the square. The flood holds all the blueness the rain washed from the azure sky. Is the city sinking or is the water rising? And then, an eerie stillness comes over my heart as my senses prickle and I realize every frozen statue has turned towards me. Some grand chess player reached down and rotated their pieces. 

All to face  _me_.

I begin to run. The fair and frozen citizens of Venice slowly churn towards me as I splash and flail through what is now sapphire-blue spray just past my knees. With every turn of my head, they are positioned closer to me. Step by step, they close in. Their faces are still expressionless, and for all their authentic quality, they could be living mannequins. 

The pillars of the city shake. They close in, and their arms occupy emptiness one second and my arms the next. I can’t scream. They’ve already shoved me under the surface, and though I thrash and struggle and squirm, their stone-like fingers are in my hair and in my mouth and on my shoulders, pressing down and down and down. Their touch is as cold as a yank from Armand from the collar when it’s already at the third setting. It is as cold as the first time my beloved monsters came to open my eyes and show me the truth. 

I open my eyes to stinging darkness and peer down into the deep dark lapis lazuli that has swallowed Venice. I am sinking to meet it, and these angels, all these noble dead, would aid my descent. I can hear them calling, even awake, in my head.

It wasn’t that the water had risen or the city had sunk. It was that…It was that I had stopped pretending not to  _drown_.


End file.
